What’s more dangerous, dog bites or snake bites?

What’s more dangerous, dog bites or snake bites?

Thanks to Fred Kilbourne and insure.com

More people die in the U.S. of dog bites each year (about 20) than from snake bites (generally fewer than 10).  This may be misleading, however, since there are far more dog bites (about 4 million) than snake bites (about 45,000) in a typical year.  Thus, for a given bite, snakes are nearly 50 times as dangerous as dogs.

Worldwide, the picture is worse – much worse.  Since the United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population, extrapolation leads us to expect worldwide fatalities from bites of about 400 by dogs and perhaps 200 by snakes.  Actual data, on the other hand, supports estimates of bite deaths of perhaps 40,000 from dogs (mostly due to rabies) – and about 125,000 from snakes.  It’s a jungle out there!

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